Harun Rashid's bleak view of communism ([#1] Now playing: Crouching police, hidden politicians [/#], April 13) is one that would surely make Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels turn over in their graves. In the said article, the author makes an unfair and unsubstantiated comparison between a corrupt and unjust government, and communism.

The hundreds of millions of people who call themselves socialists and/or communists all believe that the system of private property they know - whether it is in industrial capitals, piles of money, landed estates, or slaves of the system - is wrong, and that the consequent inequality between the rich and the poor is wrong, and finally that any exploitation of one human being by another is wrong. This highly Romantic sense of social wrong, and the consequent drive toward social justice, are the ethical and emotional bases of any socialist or communist movement.

Virtually all socialists have subscribed to a characteristically Romantic solution to these social problems: to end all or much private property; to turn the land, the factories, and the banks, at least, over to the community.

Marx, for example, saw the contemporary struggle in 19th century Europe as only one chapter in the whole vast sweep of universal history, which he believed to be a continuous evolutionary sequence of struggles between the mutually interacting classes of society. For Marx, the Romantic struggle of universal history was reduced to an economic struggle between social classes: "The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggles."

If one were to swallow the said article whole without any consideration, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that all communists and socialists are abusers of human rights, who propagate corruption and use the police to discourage dissent.

Far from it, communists dream of a social Utopia, in which men and women are treated as equals in spite of their many differences. In the words of Marx and Engels, "The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority."

As I understand it, the writer is attempting to draw a comparison between the present Malaysian government and a corrupt and unjust government. It is unfortunate that the author chose a communistic government as his comparator, for communism has a lot to teach us if we are only willing to learn.

In essence, what the writer believes to be the forces of communism can just as easily be attributed to a democratic government or a fascist government. Tyranny, despotism, corruption and the likes are not features of communism; they are features of any type of government that chooses not to uphold the universal beliefs and standards that many hold dear.

In all fairness, communism and socialism is not perfect by any measure, but what form of government is? Nevertheless, the basic doctrine of socialism, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", is one that we should all keep in mind.